Travel to Europe can be very hard in economy class. The seats are close together (29-31 inch per seat) with scant legroom. The flight over the Atlantic is overnight so you have to try to sleep on the plane. We go from Albuquerque (GMT-7) to Italy (GMT+1) so we have eight hour jet lag and we don’t sleep much on the flight.
Last time we paid about 40% extra for premium economy. The seats were 36 inches apart and a little wider. The food was better.
This time we are trying a new idea. We fly from Albuquerque (GMT-7) to New York (GMT-5) and stay overnight in a hotel near JFK. The next day we are taking a daytime flight over the Atlantic to London (GMT+0) and stay in a hotel around London. The next day we fly from London to Milan (GMT+1) and then a train to Pavia (30 minutes) and will sleep in Pavia. We start walking the next day.
Here is a map of the trip.
So we don’t have to sleep on the plane, we have a daytime flight where we can watch a bunch of movies. We sleep in hotels with real beds. The trip will take 45 hours (Albuquerque to Pavia) instead of about 20 hours if we went all in one day. We thought traveling over a few days might help with the jet lag also.
On the way back we will take the train from Lucca to Milan and then fly to London. The next day we fly from London to New York and then to Albuquerque.